Ongoing problems in the U.S. economy continue to manifest themselves in new ways. TheStreet .com, an Internet-based financial news service, tabulated a list of banks with high exposure to losses on construction loans. Six of the top 20 are in…
Books put crisis in perspective
When the economy is fraught with fear and uncertainty, as it is right now, sometimes it is better to read history than the stuff academic economists write for each other. The 1929 stock market crash, and the Great Depression that…
Cure for $100 crude? Raise taxes on big rigs
Eighteenth century-English writer Samuel Johnson once observed, “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” Crude oil near $100 per barrel ought to concentrate our minds in U.S. society, but that…
Greenspan hits pitfall in memoir
The danger of writing contemporary history is that between finishing the manuscript and the book’s publication, something will change that will make you look foolish. Just ask former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, whose memoir hit the stores just as…